Would-be assessor Largent's argument doesn't hold up

If a candidate argues that the voters should elect him to assess property because the incumbent assessor isn’t doing a good job, is falling behind the market’s curve in figuring valuations and is overtaxing homeowners, the first question to answer is whether he’s right.

Ron Largent is wrong. Even using his own numbers, his arguments don’t stand up.

Largent, a real estate agent, argues that property prices started their long slide downhill in 2007, but that incumbent Shasta County Assessor-Record Leslie Morgan didn’t start cutting assessments, as required under Proposition 8, until at least a year too late. Property owners who bought during the boom, under this line of thinking, are substantially overtaxed.

But here’s the glitch: Morgan — or any assessor — would need a time machine to value property to Largent’s liking.

The story Largent tells begins in 2007, when the average sale price of a home in Shasta County fell by almost 5 percent. He argues that Morgan should have promptly started cutting assessments for that year.

But how? The average sale price for a given year is a number you can only know at the end of December. Yet property assessments are based on the value at the beginning of the year, for tax bills that aren’t mailed out until the fall.

In a rapidly falling real estate market — as we’ve seen in California the past few years — the gap between tax assessments and market values can grow painfully wide. But the law is clear about when the “lien date” is. The one consolation after a year of falling property values is that, in the next year, homeowners do get a tax cut.

And Morgan has in fact been proactive in reviewing and lowering assessments. Last year, the office reviewed all property sales going back to January of 2003 and cut 16,000 parcels’ assessments, and thus tax bills. This year, with values down still more — indeed, 2009 saw the steepest year-over-year drop of the slump — the office is reviewing 50,000 sales all the way back to January of 2001, with an eye to reducing assessments.

Morgan took over leadership of the assessor-recorder’s office in January of 2007, just as the unprecedented real estate slump began. Under her stewardship and despite trying circumstances, the office has done a fair and professional job. Indeed, aside from his argument about valuations, even Largent praises the customer service of the recorder’s office, which speaks volumes about its leadership.

Largent is an energetic and community-spirited man who wants to see Shasta County become a better place. For this office, though, Morgan’s low-key competence and knowledge of the intricacies of the law are far more likely to lead to fair and accurate tax bills. For an assessor-recorder, voters can’t really ask for more.